Archive for the ‘adcenter’ Category

Bing Ads released sitelink extensions in October of 2012, which enables advertisers to provide additional links in their text ads. Google AdWords has had ad sitelinks for some time, so this was a great addition by our friends at Bing Ads. For example, if you were an ecommerce website selling sporting goods, you could provide ad sitelinks for your top categories, like football, baseball, basketball, etc. right beneath your standard text ad. Sitelink extensions are great usability-wise, while they also provide a nice advantage in the SERPs (since they take up more real-estate).

Here are two examples of sitelink extensions in action (2 Formats):

So, let’s say you set up sitelink extensions for some of your campaigns, and you’re basking in the glory of those beautiful ads (and the click through they are getting). But, maybe your reporting isn’t lining up clicks and visits-wise. Sure, there are several reasons that could be happening, but maybe it got worse since you launched sitelink extensions. Well, the reason could very well be the lack of tagging on your ad sitelinks. If those additional URLs aren’t tagged properly, then your analytics package could very well be reporting that traffic as organic search. And that would be shame.

In this post, I’m going to walk you through why this could be happening, and how to rectify the situation. After reading this post, you might just run to Bing Ads today and make changes. Let’s jump in.

Sitelink Extensions and Tracking ParametersIn Bing Ads, you can include sitelink extensions several ways. First, you can add them manually via the Bing Ads web UI. Second, you can use Bing Ads Editor to add them locally, and then upload them to your account. And third, and possibly the top reason ad sitelinks don’t get tagged, is that you can import them from AdWords via the “Import from Google” functionality. Note, the import from AdWords functionality is awesome, so don’t get me wrong. It’s just that it’s easy to import ad sitelinks and not know they are there. Then you run the risk of uploading untagged sitelink extensions.

So, you need to make sure that your ad sitelinks are tagged properly, based on the analytics package you are using to track campaigns. For example, if you are using Google Analytics, then you need to make sure that you identify each click coming from your sitelink extensions. That means you should be appending tracking parameters to your sitelink URLs. For Google Anlaytics, you can use URL Builder to tag your landing page URLs.

How To Tag Your Ad Sitelinks in Bing AdsAgain there are various ways to include sitelink extensions in your campaigns, from using the web UI to using Bing Ads Editor to using the “Import from Google” functionality. I’ll quickly cover each method below to make sure you know where to apply your tracking parameters.

1. The Bing Ads Web UIYou can currently apply ad sitelinks at the campaign level in Bing Ads. When you access a campaign, you can click the “Ad Extensions” tab to include ad sitelinks. Once there, you can click “Create” to add a new sitelink extension. If you have other sitelink extensions set up across campaigns, you will see them listed (and you can apply those to your campaign if it makes sense).

If you want to add a completely new sitelink extension, then click “Create New”. When adding the sitelink extension, Bing Ads provide a field for link text and then a field for the destination URL. When you add the URL, make sure your tracking parameters are added! If not, your visits will show up as “Bing Organic” versus “Bing CPC”. Good for the SEO team, but not so good for the paid search team. :)

2. Bing Ads EditorI love Bing Ads Editor. It’s an awesome way to manage your campaigns locally and then sync with the Bing Ads web UI. And as you can guess, there is functionality for adding and editing sitelink extensions in Bing Ads Editor. You can access your sitelink extensions by clicking the “Ad Extensions” tab for any selected campaign.

Once you click the “Ad Extensions” tab, you can add sitelink extensions by clicking the “Create a Sitelink Extension” button from the top menu. Then similar to the web UI, you can add the link text and the destination URL. When adding your destination URLs, make sure your tracking parameters are added.

3. Import from Google (in Bing Ads Editor)As I explained earlier, I love having the ability to import campaigns, changes, etc. from AdWords directly into Bing Ads Editor. It makes managing campaigns across both platforms much more efficient. But, I’ve seen advertisers import campaigns from AdWordsthat have sitelink extensions, but they don’t realize it. Then they upload their campaigns to Bing Ads and don’t understand that prospective customers are clicking their sitelinks, visiting their sites, etc., but those visits aren’t being tracked correctly. Again, those visits will show up as “Bing Organic” in your analytics reporting.

When you go through the process of importing your campaigns, make sure you double check the “Ad Extensions” tab for the newly-imported campaign. You just might find sitelink extensions sitting there. And yes, they very well could be left untagged. Make sure you add your tracking parameters before uploading them to Bing Ads (from Bing Ads Editor).

You can also uncheck the “Ad Extensions” radio button when importing your campaigns from AdWords. Then you can add your sitelink extensions directly in Bing Ads Editor (via the second method I covered earlier in this post.

Sitelinks Are Powerful, But Only If They Are TrackedSitelinks extensions are a great addition to Bing Ads, and they absolutely can yield higher click through rates. But, you need to make sure those clicks are being tracked and attributed to the right source – your Bing Ads campaigns! I recommend checking your campaigns today to make sure your sitelink extensions have the proper tracking parameters appended. If not, you can quickly refine those links to make sure all is ok. And when everything is being tracked properly, you just might see a boost in visits, orders, and revenue being attributed to Bing Ads. And that’s always a good thing.

There are a lot of moving parts to developing and managing SEM campaigns. First, you need to develop a strong paid search strategy, perform keyword research, map out a robust structure for your campaigns and ad groups, determine budgets, create effective ads, etc. After the setup phase, you will be neck deep in ongoing campaign management, which involves refining your campaigns and ad groups based on performance. That includes refining keywords, ads, creating new ad groups when necessary, pausing ad groups or campaigns that don’t perform well, split testing ads, etc. This includes managing both Search and Display Network campaigns. As you can guess, SEM is definitely not for the faint of heart.

Based on all that’s involved with paid search, I think it’s easy for SEM’s to keep driving campaigns forward without taking a step back to analyze the competitive landscape. For example, which companies are you competing against in SEM, which ads are they running, what types of landing pages are they using, how does their pricing stack up, etc. That’s where a thorough competitive analysis can pay huge dividends. There are so many important things you can learn from analyzing the competition that I’m surprised more companies aren’t doing it.

In this post, I’m going to explore five important insights you can learn from performing an SEM competitive analysis. My hope is that once you read through this post, you’ll be eager to get started on your own analysis. Let’s get started.

What’s an SEM Competitive Analysis?Simply put, an SEM competitive analysis enables you to understand the companies also bidding on the same keywords and categories you are targeting in paid search. Let’s face it, if you are bidding on a set of keywords, it’s important to understand which competitors are targeting the same keywords, where they are driving visitors, how aggressively they are bidding, the pricing they are providing for similar products, etc. While performing the analysis, there are times you find incredible nuggets of information that can help enhance your own campaigns. You can also understand why certain competitors might be outperforming your own efforts.

Competitive Analysis ToolsThis post isn’t meant to provide a tutorial on how to use the various competitive tools in the industry. There are many to choose from and you should test them out to determine which ones fit your needs. Pricing-wise, some are paid solutions while others are offered for free. For example, SEMRush and SpyFu are two paid solutions that enable you to view a wealth of competitive SEM data such as keywords, ads, cpc’s, volume of traffic, etc.

Google’s Ad Preview Tool is free and enables you to view an unpersonalized SERP, while also enabling you to specify geographic location, mobile vs. desktop, language, etc. In addition, AdWords recently released Auction Insights, which gives you a view of the companies you are competing with on a keyword level (if there is enough data). You can view a competitor’s impression share, their avg position, the overlap rate, the percentage of times they rank above your own ads, etc. Again, there are many tools on the market, and my recommendation is to figure out the right combination for your needs. Many of the paid solutions have free trials, so you can start using them immediately to gauge their effectiveness.

A screenshot from the Google Ad Preview Tool:

Analysis ScopeWhen determining the scope of your analysis, you can either start small and analyze a specific ad group, or you can analyze a larger campaign (or set of campaigns). If you are just starting out, you might want to start smaller and just focus on an important ad group. Once you determine the best process to use, along with the right tools, you can expand to other ad groups and larger campaigns. I recommend choosing an ad group that’s important to your business, but one that might not be performing very well. You never know, the competitive analysis could reveal why that is…

Let’s take a look at five things you can learn from an SEM competitive analysis that can greatly help your own SEM efforts:

1. Who Are Your *Real* Competitors (in Search)Whenever I begin helping a new client, I always ask them who their top competitors are. It’s a trick question, since the standard set of competitors in the industry might not be the same competitors in SEM (or SEO). Understanding which companies are present in the SERPs for target keywords is extremely important. For consumers that don’t know which company to do business with, and start searching Google, the offline competition might not make a big difference. That’s why you need to understand your true competitors in SEM. That’s who prospective customers will be reviewing while researching online.

When I present my findings with regard to true competition, it’s not uncommon for my clients to fall out of their chairs. Sure, they might find some familiar faces, but they might find some additional companies or websites that surprise them. For example, say hello to Amazon.com, the biggest and baddest ecommerce retailer on the web. If you are selling online, Amazon very well could be a core competitor in SEM. If that’s the case, you better check out pricing on Amazon.com, how often they show up for your target keywords, which third party sellers are providing similar products, etc. Let’s face it, low pricing and Amazon Prime membership is a killer combination that you’ll have to face and deal with at some point. And you’re not alone.

You also might find comparison shopping sites, forums, answer-driven sites like Yahoo Answers, personal blogs, etc. If you do, you might need to form a strategy for monitoring those sites to ensure you are represented (the right ways). You might find manufacturer websites that provide links to online retailers that offer their products. Are you listed there? Should you be? I think you get the picture. Understand the real competition, dig deeper, and form a strategy for dealing with those “competitors”.

A list of competitors in AdWords for a target keyword:

2. Find the Keywords Your Competitors are RunningOK, so now you know which companies you are competing with in SEM. Your next question might focus on which keywords they are running. This is important for several reasons. First, you want to make sure you aren’t missing important keywords or categories that customers are searching for. Even if you performed keyword research, you might have missed something. Analyzing keywords your competitors are running could help close the gaps.

Analyzing the keywords a competitor is bidding on:

Second, you can start to gauge how much traffic each keyword or keyword category is driving to your competitors’ websites. For example, if you see a larger percentage of traffic for certain categories, there might a good reason for that. Maybe they are seeing outstanding performance from those keywords or categories, and they are allocating more budget to those keywords.

Note: there are many companies not managing SEM correctly, so be careful here… If you see something stand out while analyzing the keywords that competitors are running, you can and should, test those yourself. As long as you have a strong analytics strategy in place, you can easily identify high quality traffic, strong performance, etc. I guess what I’m saying is that keyword intelligence is great to attain, but nothing compares to actual testing.

3. Competitor Landing PagesNext on our list are the landing pages that competitors are using. Let’s say you were running an ad group for an important category. You are getting a lot of traffic, but not many conversions. You’re baffled why that is… Well, analyzing the landing pages that competitors are using can tell you a lot. Are they driving visitors to product detail pages, campaign landing pages, lead generation pages focused on gaining contact information, mobile landing pages (for mobile traffic), etc? All of this can help you better understand why your competitors might be outperforming you in SEM.

Understanding the landing page experience for prospective customers can help you form ideas for your own landing pages. If you are driving visitors to a product detail page and competitors have set up dedicated campaign landing pages with a wealth of information, images, video, reviews, live chat, etc., you might want to refine your efforts. Don’t pale in comparison to your competition. It could be the very reason you are seeing less conversion (or no conversion).

A sample SEM landing page:

4. Ads, Ad Extensions, and PLA’sUsing competitive tools, you can review the text ads that competitors are running. When prospective customers are facing a SERP filled with paid ads, it’s important to stand out (for the right reasons). Are your competitors punching sales, deals, special offers, etc? Are they providing actual pricing in their ads? Are competitor text ads aligned with the landing pages they are driving visitors to? All of this can help you understand why your own performance isn’t as strong as it should be.

Viewing competitor text ads:

And let’s not forget about ad extensions and product listing ads. Are your competitors using sitelinks extensions, product extensions, call extensions, local extensions, social extensions, etc? The extra information provided by ad extensions can be extremely valuable to prospective customers. For example, you can drive visitors deeper to certain sections of your site, to specific products pages, show social connections, click to call phone numbers, etc. And if you’re an ecommerce retailer, don’t overlook the power of seller rating extensions. Those little stars can bring a level of credibility that can mean the difference between revenue or just a click.

An example of sitelinks extensions in AdWords:

In addition to what I mentioned above, I have to cover the power of product listing ads. Recently, Google transitioned Google Shopping to a pure paid model. Product listing ads are an important part of that model, and are extremely powerful. They are image-based ads for specific products, based on your merchant center feed. They are CPC-based and can help drive strong performance for ecommerce retailers. If your competitors are running PLA’s, and you aren’t, you better get in the game. There are times text ads just don’t compare to the image-based PLA’s competing for attention in the SERPs.

An example of product listings ads in action:

5. PricingThe final insight I’m going to cover is probably the most important – pricing. Performing a competitive analysis will reveal the pricing your competition is providing for the same products you are selling. The power of the internet is a double edged sword for many sellers. You can now compete with the big boys, but you will also be compared with every other seller on the web. And this can happen in mere seconds as people research products via Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

I find this step in a competitive analysis provides incredibly important insights for my clients. They are sometimes floored by what they are seeing. Actually, it’s not unusual for some clients to start yelling as I’m presenting my findings. “How are they providing that pricing?” “That can’t be right.” “They are lowballing prospective customers!” I’ve heard every possible comment under the sun.

Regardless, unless a consumer knows and trusts your company, you are going to have a hard time comparing to a competitor selling the same product at 20% lower than your own pricing. Not every person will go with the lowest price (based on a number of credibility factors), but some will. And when you are paying for every click, it’s important to keep those visitors on your site with the hope of converting them.

Analyzing competitor pricing:

My recommendation is to analyze each of the competitors for a category, and break down the pricing for each. Try and determine if that’s the real pricing, how they are providing that pricing, understand their shipping costs, etc., and then form a strategy for dealing with the situation. By the way, that could mean pausing your ad groups for that category. If your ROI is pitiful, and your competitors are selling at pricing that makes no sense, then pause your ad groups. You can find other more profitable categories to drive…

Summary – Competitive Data is There. Go Analyze ItAre you ready to get rolling with your own competitive analysis? As I covered above, there’s a lot you can learn. It’s important that you don’t get so caught up in your own campaigns that you forget to learn what your competition is running, how much they are spending, where they are driving visitors, and what type of landing pages they are using. You never know, you might end up finding serious gaps in your own campaigns. And that can lead to more revenue, profit, and a stronger ROI. Good luck.

Microsoft adCenter has been rolling out new features and updates at a rapid pace recently. Several of the changes aim to make your life a lot easier, and bring AdWords-like functionality to adCenter. That’s great news, because when you’re managing a lot of campaigns, ad groups, and keywords, you don’t want to have to deal with compatibility issues when attempting to sync accounts across both AdWords and adCenter.

One of the latest adCenter changes impacts how negative keywords are handled within adCenter Desktop, which is a desktop-based software package that enables you to refine your accounts locally and then sync with adCenter when needed. It’s similar to AdWords Editor, which is a similar tool from Google. Both are essential tools for Search Engine Marketers. In this post, I’m going to explain what the change is, and walk you step by step through how to manage negatives in the new adCenter desktop tool.

A Change to How Negatives are Managed in adCenter DesktopNegative keywords are extremely important in Paid Search. They enable you to stop your ads from showing when certain words are present in a user’s query. In adCenter, negatives have gotten a serious facelift recently. First, you can now add exact match keywords, which wasn’t possible until recently. AdWords included this functionality for a long time, so it was great to see adCenter implement exact match negatives.

In addition, now campaign-level and ad group negatives work together versus having ad group negatives override campaign level keywords. Most marketers didn’t even know this was happening in the past, and it absolutely was affecting the performance of their campaigns. Now that negatives work differently (and better), adCenter Desktop has also been updated to better match AdWords Editor. This will bring a familiar way to manage negatives across AdWords Editor and adCenter Desktop. The only problem is that the location of managing negatives has moved!

Therefore, I’m going to walk you through the new Negatives Tab in adCenter Desktop. Once you find it, know how it works, and see how to manage negatives keywords in the new version of adCenter Desktop, I think you’ll dig it. Let’s jump in.

The New Negatives Tab in adCenter Desktop
1. Make Sure You Are Using the Latest Version of adCenter DesktopFirst, if you haven’t downloaded adCenter Desktop yet, you can find it here. If you already have it installed, then you will be prompted to upgrade to the latest version (which has the new Negatives Tab). If you already upgraded to the latest version, then you’re good to go.

2. Locate the New Negatives TabAfter launching adCenter Desktop, you can locate the new Negatives Tab by accessing a campaign and/or ad group in your account. Let’s check out an ad group for this example. Once you click an ad group, make sure the Keywords Tab is active by clicking the tab. You will then see the Negatives Tab in the upper left hand corner of the Campaign Manager.

3. Manage Negative KeywordsBy default, the Positives Tab will be displayed. Positives are the keywords you want to run, while Negatives are words that you’ll add to stop your ads from showing when a user’s query contains those words. Go ahead and click the Negatives Tab.

4. Add Campaign-Level or Ad Group-Level KeywordsIf you don’t have any negatives included in the ad group at hand, the screen will be blank. At this point, you can either add a single negative keyword or you can add negatives in bulk. If you want to add a single negative keyword, click the dropdown arrow next to the “Create Negative Keyword” button. adCenter Desktop will display two options, one for creating a campaign level keyword and one for creating an ad group-level keyword.

5. Enter a Negative Keyword and Select Match TypeChoose one of the options and then enter the keyword in adCenter Desktop. At the bottom of the screen, you can enter or refine the keyword and then choose a match type. You can select either “phrase” or “exact” match for your negative keywords.

6. Add in BulkIf you want to add several negatives at one time, you can click the dropdown arrow next to the “Multiple Changes” button. You will see options for adding or deleting multiple campaign-level or ad group-level negatives.

7. Enter Negatives in BulkChoose one of the options and then make sure the right campaign and ad group are selected. If you selected this option from an ad group, then that ad group will be selected by default. Enter your negative keywords by adding one per line. To add exact match negatives at this point, enclose each keyword in brackets. For example, [sample keyword] would add an exact match negative. If you enter a keyword without brackets, it will be added as a phrase match negative. Then click the “Import” button to add your negative keywords. After importing your keywords, you can change the match type, if needed. Again, you can select either “phrase” or “exact” match for your negative keywords.

You’re done! Now you can sync your account and the new negatives will be uploaded to your campaigns and ad groups.

Summary – Use the New Negatives Tab in adCenter DesktopAs I explained earlier, negatives are critically important in Paid Search. I highly recommend you develop a plan for using negatives at both the campaign and ad group level. This will enable you to hone your targeting by weeding out untargeted queries. I love the latest adCenter changes, including the new Negatives Tab in adCenter Desktop. I recommend downloading the latest version of adCenter Desktop, and then get familiar with how to manage negatives in the new version.